Emergency responders are often called to the scene of an ongoing incident, such as a barricaded gunman or school shooting, and must respond quickly to the incident within a structure, such as a facility and/or building, in which they may not be familiar. In many cases, the first few moments when the first responder arrives may mean life or death for individuals confronted by the situation. While first responders often train on the specific facility to which they must respond, they typically do not have the necessary familiarity to instinctively locate specific rooms within which the events are unfolding.
Currently, there are efforts underway to map major portions of interiors within buildings. These various efforts includes things such as the “interior version” of Google Street View, 360-degree camera systems (e.g., IPIX), and LIDAR mapping of interiors with systems such as Trimble's TIMMS unit. While each system may capture images and/or wall positions, conveyance of the information in a manner that allows a first responder to quickly identify a location is lacking.
The most common manner of displaying information regarding the layout of a room within a structure is through a floor plan. Most people, however, are not trained to use floor plans. Even those trained to review floor plans take time to review and interpret the floor plan in order to assess which room is the desired location and how best to get there. Generally, the view of the walls is missing on floor plans, and this is the way normal people see and interpret interior rooms.
Many systems compensate for the view of the walls by going to a three-dimensional viewer allowing for an operator to move through the structure and see the walls, floors, ceilings, and the like, of rooms within the building. These views, however, do not allow for a quick assessment of the floor plan of the structure where an incident is occurring and quick identification of one or more routes to a particular room within the structure to pursue.